We toured Google’s new pop-up store in New York City — here’s what’s inside

NEW YORK — Google just opened its first retail store, just a few short blocks from one of New York City’s many Apple stores.

But it’s not the usual retail experience: It’s a pop-up store, intended to showcase the range of new “Made by Google” products. That’s everything from the just-released Google Pixel phone to its Amazon Echo competitor, Google Home (to say nothing of all the other stuff).

The store officially opened on Thursday, October 20. Ahead of that, Google offered Business Insider an early peek at what customers can expect. Here’s what we saw!

The Google pop-up store is at 96 Spring St. in beautiful downtown Manhattan.

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk in is this massive wooden fountain of light.

And this gigantic wall of colored blocks. (Its design changes every now and again.)

But you’re here for Google products, right? That’s what the whole store is about!

The focus of the ‘Made by Google’ pop-up is Google’s new phone, the Pixel.

Customers can try out the phone, which is otherwise sold only at Verizon stores and online through Google.

You can also check out the new custom cases for the Pixel, which are quite fetching.

Not bad, right?

Did you know there’s a little button on the new cases that can do stuff on the Pixel?

Anyway, beyond phones, there’s lots of other stuff in Google’s pop-up store. A whole area is dedicated to showing off Google Home, the Amazon Echo competitor.

You can check out the various looks for Google Home — the bottom portion can be swapped with a variety of other colored bases.

Better yet, there are two rooms, a kitchen and a living room, meant to exemplify the experience with Google Home.

There were even some cute little hidden items in the kitchen, like this Saint Pablo candle. (Praise be to ‘Ye.)

And this Google-branded box of cornflakes.

The largest section of the store, without a doubt, is dedicated to Google’s new virtual reality headset: Daydream View.

You can check out the headset up close before trying it on.

The headset is covered in a comfortable microfiber, similar to fabric on sweatpants and other sportswear.

The Daydream View headset is actually powered by the Google Pixel phone, so each of these headsets has a phone strapped to the front.

You can see it here pretty clearly from the side. That’s definitely a phone in there!

In the store, after strapping on the headset, you’re seated in a swivel chair — which is good, because it makes looking around in VR easier than ever:

When you’re not busy trying out VR, there’s this bizarre spheroid object made of tablets to, uh, look at? I guess?

And you could always take a load off on these steps.

If you like anything you see here, you can’t actually buy it on the spot. This is an ‘experience’ store — you’ll need to go online to order it.

The Google pop-up store opened to the public on Thursday, October 20, and it’ll be open through the end of 2016. It’s at 96 Spring St. in downtown Manhattan — right here:

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